Park County Search and Rescue personnel and others helped safely bring eight snowmobilers out of the backcountry last week, after the group became stuck in an off-limits area of the Beartooth Mountains.

The men emerged from the incident uninjured, the Park County Sheriff’s Office says. However, the group faces criminal citations for riding into two designated wilderness areas during their trip.

The men, who hail from Minnesota and Wisconsin, had been reported missing around 11 p.m. Wednesday, when they failed to return from that day’s trip into the mountains, the sheriff’s office said in a news release. Searchers mobilized that night, but with the snowmobilers’ exact location unknown, they decided to wait until daylight to deploy.

Assisted by riders from the Cody Country Snowmobile Association, search and rescue personnel headed to the Island Lake warming hut at 6 a.m. Thursday to plan and begin a ground search. At 7 a.m., Park County Search and Rescue launched its airplane to begin scouring the area around Maryott Lake in southern Montana, where the men were believed to have traveled.

A spotter in the plane found snowmobile tracks in the area that led south toward Granite Lake. At 8 a.m., the aerial team saw an abandoned snowmobile on the frozen lake. They followed more tracks to the very southwest corner of Granite Lake, which sits within the Shoshone National Forest in Wyoming. There, the plane crew spotted a man riding on a snowmobile, and he helped lead searchers to the rest of the group.

As it turned out, the eight men had gotten stuck in a challenging area and ran out of fuel, the sheriff’s office said. The group then built a fire and hunkered down for the night.

“The riders had gotten themselves into an extremely rugged area with steep drops, deep snow, and downed timber,” the sheriff’s office said. The terrain was so hazardous that even the most experienced riders from the Cody Country Snowmobile Association were unable to reach the spot, the release said, so helicopters were summoned. A Guardian Flight helicopter team from Cody arrived around 11:45 a.m. and found the men “uninjured and in good spirits,” the sheriff’s office said. Then around 1:30 p.m., a chopper from Teton County Search and Rescue in Jackson began shuttling the men to the Island Lake warming hut. They eventually returned to Cooke City, Montana, with friends.

Law enforcement officers with the Shoshone National Forest and the Custer Gallatin National Forest in southern Montana cited the group for “incursion into wilderness.” Both forests issued citations because the snowmobilers entered two wilderness areas — including the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness that straddles the Wyoming-Montana border, said Kristie Salzmann, a spokeswoman for the Shoshone.

Park County Sheriff Scott Steward noted it’s illegal to ride snow machines or any other mechanized mode of travel into a wilderness area.

“These areas are designated wilderness for a reason,” Steward said. “They are filled with downed timber, steep ascents, deep draws and sheer cliff faces. Much of these areas are unexplored and can be extremely dangerous if you are unfamiliar or unprepared for emergencies should they arise.”

The U.S. Forest Service has said that riding snowmobiles in wilderness areas carries a minimum fine of $525. Violations can be punished with fines of up to $5,000, six months of jail time and the forfeiture of snowmobiles and other items involved.

Salzmann noted that it’s the responsibility of recreationists to know where they are and what rules apply.

“The best way to look at it is, as drivers on any given road, we’re supposed to know what the speed limit is — even if you’re from out of the area,” Salzmann said. “It’s the same sort of thing.”

On the sheriff’s office’s Facebook page, multiple commenters called for the men to be punished. However, Rob Parent of Minnesota, who identified himself as a friend of the group, said a positive rescue was being turned into a negative.

“Fine them, keep their sleds and at the very least ban them or even try and shame them. Cool as long as they are coming home all is well,” Parent wrote. “Again thanks to all who actually helped make that possible.”

The rescue of the eight men from the upper midwest was part of a busy week in the Beartooths for Park County Search and Rescue personnel. A week earlier, search and rescue crews, snowmobile association volunteers and others helped rescue two young Montana men who had to spend two-and-a-half days in the elements after getting lost in the mountain range and breaking one of their snowmobiles. When they were rescued on Feb. 20, the men told searchers they felt like they were hours away from death.